Testing
The Hyper-6 was tested on my Athlon FX-51 testbed and it goes up against a couple of recent coolers I've tested, the stock FX-51 cooler and a Zalman Reserator 1. Here's a judicious cut and paste from the Zalman review with regards to the testing conditions.To test the noise side of things I used my good old ears. To limit the affects of ambient noise in my wholly unscientific listening tests, I equipped the system with a Gainward SilentFX graphics card and a very quiet Tagan power supply. The SK8V comes without a discrete fan on the K8T800 bridge so things were eerily quiet.
To monitor temperatures I used Motherboard Monitor with the default SK8V profile. Temperatures were pre-tested to get a quick idea of the maximum and idle temperatures for each cooler, before a half an hour run of the HEXUS SETI benchmark was used to generate CPU load and therefore heat. After the half hour was up, the SETI instance was closed and drop-off temperatures were recorded, giving a full spectrum of results for idle, quick load, constant load and load drop-off, over a 30 minute period. Ambient temperature throughout testing for all coolers was a nice 18°C
Temperature Testing
The Hyper-6 was tested with the fan at 3000rpm, it's maximum setting, and at 1800rpm, the lowest setting.
The Hyper-6 positions itself as a fearsome air-cooler at both fan speed settings, undercutting the stock air-cooler by some 10 degrees at stock CPU frequency. That should translate into good overclocking, more on that shortly.
Heat loads up quickly on the Hyper-6 at both fan settings, but the sink is quite capable of removing it all within minutes of load being stopped, dropping back to idle temperatures very easily. At the 1800rpm fan speed setting, performance versus the stock cooler isn't brilliant, but then neither sink is made to work too hard to remove what little heat the processor gives out. Overclocking should be the Hyper-6's forte, by virtue of its surface area and competent fan.
Noise Testing
The Hyper-6 disappoints in this regard. The fan supplied is noisy at either setting, most annoyingly so at its 1800rpm setting with a low pitched vibration kicking in. At 3000rpm it simply moves enough air over the fins to cause air turbulence and subsequent noise.The decibel levels at both settings are fairly low in my estimation, but the produced noise is annoying enough to be detected at all times.
A low point of my Hyper-6 experience.
Overclocking testing
Overclocking was tested at 3000rpm and 1800rpm against the stock cooler. CPU voltage was 1.7V at all times.| Hyper-6 1800rpm | Hyper-6 3000rpm | Stock Cooler | |
| Maximum Overclock | 2.41GHz | 2.46GHz | 2.40GHz |
| Maximum Temperature | 70°C | 71°C | 74°C |
The Athlon FX-51 used isn't the best overclocker in the world but the Hyper-6 manages a decent overclock, especially in 3000rpm mode. Maximum operating temperatures were similar across the board, but the Hyper-6 achieving better frequencies the faster the fan was run, compared to the stock cooler.
Not too shabby at all, the Hyper-6 finding its niche.
